A Christianity Without Jesus: A Jesus Without Christianity

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The question haunts American Christianity today: What if we removed the way of Jesus from the Western church? The answer is not difficult to imagine because we are living it. This stark reality describes much of current American Christianity—a faith that has not simply lost its way but has been abandoned by the very way it claims to follow. Perhaps more accurately, these institutions have imagined a way that centers themselves rather than Jesus.

When Faith Abandons Its Foundation

Walk through the corridors of Christian history, and you will find theologians justifying some of the most heinous acts ever committed in the name of Christ. From the Crusades to the Doctrine of Discovery, from slavery's biblical justifications to the cultural genocide of Indigenous peoples, Christianity has repeatedly wielded scripture as a weapon rather than embracing it as a path to transformation.

This betrayal reaches its clearest expression in the split between modernist and fundamentalist movements—a schism that has created our current climate of injustice toward one another and toward the land, including what must be understood as the whole community of creation. Both sides of this divide have committed the same fundamental error: they have elevated beliefs over being, doctrine over discipleship, and theological correctness over transformative love.

Whether progressive or conservative, both movements beg the wrong question entirely. The writers of scripture, when they crafted their narratives—and we must remember that 90% of the Bible consists of story—never intended for readers to question the truth of the story. Their concern was sharing the truth in the story. They understood what we have forgotten: that transformation happens through encounter with living truth, not through intellectual assent to propositions.

In both camps, kindness and basic humanity have been stripped away in favor of ideological or political purity. Progressive Christianity often substitutes social justice rhetoric for a genuine relationship with the marginalized. Conservative Christianity frequently replaces Jesus's radical call to love with rigid adherence to selective moral codes. Both miss the forest for the trees, the heart for the head, the way for the words.

The Simplicity We've Complicated

Jesus himself cared little for theological beliefs as we understand them today. His entire message can be distilled into the profound simplicity of right action, captured in his response to those who would test him: Love God with all you are by loving your neighbor the way you love yourself. This was not theology; it was a way of being in the world.

That type of Christianity—one rooted in transformative love rather than doctrinal adherence—scarcely exists in the West or, frankly, anywhere that Christianity has become institutionalized and imperial. We have created a Christianity without Jesus, a faith that bears his name but abandons his way.

The Faithful Remnant: Jesus Without Christianity

Yet throughout the long history of Christianity, there have always existed individuals and movements who rejected the imperial religion in favor of kinder spiritualities that actually followed the way of Jesus. These people and communities understood that becoming better human beings mattered more than maintaining religious power structures.

Consider Columba, the Irish monk who carried Celtic Christianity's earth-honoring, community-centered faith to Scotland in the sixth century. Unlike the Roman missionaries who would later impose hierarchical structures, Columba established monasteries that lived in harmony with the natural world and honored the spiritual wisdom already present in Celtic culture. Or Patrick, who approached the Irish not as a conqueror but as one seeking to understand their spiritual wisdom, learning their language and customs before sharing the gospel in ways that resonated with indigenous Irish spirituality rather than replacing it.

Think of Henriette Catherine von Gersdorff, Count Zinzendorf's grandmother, whose Pietist faith emphasized personal relationship with Jesus over institutional orthodoxy. Her spiritual mentoring of young Zinzendorf planted seeds that would flourish in the Moravian community's radical inclusivity, their embrace of emotional spirituality, and their revolutionary approach to missions that often respected rather than destroyed Indigenous cultures. Consider also Hildegard of Bingen, the twelfth-century visionary mystic who received divine revelations that challenged church authority while advocating for creation care and holistic healing, understanding the interconnectedness of all life centuries before ecology became a discipline.

Finally, Francis of Assisi scandalized the church hierarchy by actually taking Jesus's words about poverty and creation seriously, stripping himself of worldly possessions and referring to the sun, moon, and earth as his brothers and sisters. His radical commitment to Jesus's way of love and simplicity threatened the institutional church's accumulation of wealth and power. These figures and the movements they inspired offer us glimpses of what Christianity might look like when it prioritizes Jesus's way over institutional control.

The fact that many of these figures faced persecution from their own religious institutions proves how desperate imperial Christianity has always been to maintain its hold on power. The church has consistently been more threatened by those who actually follow Jesus than by those who openly oppose him.

The Contemporary Exodus

This pattern continues today. We are witnessing a mass exodus from institutional Christianity, particularly among younger generations who recognize the gap between Jesus' teachings and the church's practices. Many are not abandoning faith; they are abandoning the institutions that have betrayed that faith.

Across the country and around the world, communities are forming that may not call themselves Christian or church but embody something much closer to what Jesus likely envisioned. These communities prioritize mutual aid over doctrinal purity, creation care over dominion, and justice over judgment. They understand that following Jesus means becoming fully human in relationship with others and with the earth.

Indigenous communities have always understood this. Before European Christianity arrived on these shores, Native peoples lived in ways that embodied many of Jesus's core teachings about community, reciprocity, and sacred relationship with creation. The tragedy is that Christianity, rather than learning from these indigenous wisdoms, sought to destroy them in the name of salvation.

Reclaiming the Way

The path forward requires honest acknowledgment: Much of what calls itself Christianity today would be unrecognizable to Jesus. The imperial Christianity that has dominated Western civilization for over a millennium has produced a faith that often contradicts everything Jesus taught about love, justice, and human dignity.

But the way of Jesus persists, even when Christianity abandons it. It lives in communities that practice radical hospitality, in individuals who choose love over fear, in movements that prioritize the marginalized over the powerful. It thrives wherever people choose transformation over conformity, wherever justice matters more than theological correctness.

Perhaps what we need is not a reformed Christianity but a return to Jesus, not Jesus the religious figure, but Jesus the way-shower, the one who demonstrated what it means to be fully human in right relationship with God, with others, and with creation.

This Jesus, freed from the constraints of imperial Christianity, continues to call us toward a more authentic way of being in the world. The question is not whether we can save Christianity, but whether we have the courage to follow Jesus wherever that path might lead—even if it leads us away from the institutions that claim his name but abandon his way.

In the end, we may discover that Jesus, without Christianity, offers more hope than Christianity without Jesus ever could.